Farewell to my witty, wonderful friend Roger
Gyles Brandreth knew Sir Roger Moore from the age of 12. Here, he remembers the debonair James Bond star who never took himself too seriously, and grew old gracefully – if begrudgingly
Roger Moore – star of the television series
The Saint, seven times James Bond, subsequently tireless Unicef ambassador and internationally acclaimed good egg – was part of my life from the time I was 12.
For his National Service, immediately after the Second World War, Roger, aged 18, joined the army. To his surprise, he was sent to officer training school. “It wasn’t what I expected,” he said. “I was a copper’s son from Stockwell, south London, but I think I looked the part.”
One of his army instructors was a Major Arthur Douch. Rotund, with an improbable Hitler moustache, and several inches shorter than Moore’s 6ft 1in, Douch definitely didn’t look the part, but the pair quickly became best buddies and their friendship endured. Seventy years later (long after the major’s death), Roger still talked of “little Douchie” with affection. In the Fifties, when Roger moved to America in the hope of becoming a movie star, Major Douch moved to a prep school in Kent where he found himself teaching Latin to boys like me.
I was blessed in knowing Roger Moore. He was kind to me simply because I was a living link to his old pal Douchie. As a schoolboy, it was exciting to be able to boast that I knew The Saint.
Immediately after the army, Roger used his extraordinary good looks to earn his living as a male model, promoting Brylcreem and toothpaste and, more memorably, bathing trunks and knitwear.
He used to tease me because in the Seventies I had started out on television wearing colourful jumpers as a trademark, saying: “You began as a bit of a knitwear model, too, didn’t you? But somehow I’ve ended up a multi-millionaire and a world-famous film star, whereas you, Gyles…”
He volunteered to teach me acting. “I’ll show you everything I know,” he said. “It won’t take long.” He taught me how to raise my left eyebrow. I couldn’t manage the right. Roger could raise both of his. “That’s because I’m twice the actor you are, Gyles.”
He was always a funny man. When asked what he brought to the part of James Bond, he said: “White teeth.”
He was also, always, selfdeprecating – infuriatingly so. He was set to be what he called “a proper actor”. Working as a young film extra after the war, he was spotted by the Irish director Brian Desmond Hurst, who helped him get a place at Rada and offered to pay his fees. Knowing Hurst a little in later life, I said to Roger: “I imagine he fancied you.” Roger raised both eyebrows. “Do you think so? I hope you’re not suggesting I traded on my looks rather than my talent?”
In fact, that’s exactly what he did, time and again. He was offered a job in Stratford-upon-Avon playing Shakespeare but preferred to take his chances in Hollywood, as his youthful heroes had been David Niven and Errol Flynn. In manner, he resembled Niven. In Ivanhoe, his television breakout moment in the Fifties, he channelled Flynn. In whatever he played, he sent himself up gently. When he was cast in The Wild Geese
(1978) opposite Richard Burton and Richard Harris, he told me he’d insisted his lines were severely cut in the scenes he had to play alongside them. He reckoned they were “proper actors” and he didn’t want to be shown up. Yet, if you watch the film, you realise that Roger Moore is quite in their league.
Often Roger used his dry humour to disguise his vulnerability; and practical jokes were there to ensure that nobody could ever think he was taking himself, or what he did, seriously.
When making For Your Eyes Only, his fifth Bond outing, Desmond Llewellyn, the actor playing Q, turned up for filming to find he had been given a whole page of additional dialogue, full of complex technical terms. Llewellyn mastered it – just – only to arrive on the set to find Roger, smirking. 007 had written Q’s impossible new script as a spoof.
Above everything, Roger wanted to be loved – which he was. He was held in huge affection by the public and always made time for his fans. Once, a child approached him for his autograph at Nice airport and was disappointed to find he had signed it “Roger Moore” when the boy thought he was collecting the autograph of James Bond. Roger explained sotto voce: “Oh, I am James Bond. I just sign myself as Roger Moore because I don’t want Blofeld to know where I am.”
He was hungry for love, but not always lucky in love. He married his first wife at 19 (“a blonde figureskater – she looked the part”) and left her for the singer Dorothy Squires, 10 years his senior and “a bloody nightmare”.
Then came Luisa Mattioli, the mother of his three adored children, but that didn’t last. Towards the end of their marriage, when walking into a restaurant in the south of France they passed a girl in hot pants. Roger didn’t even glance at the girl, but Luisa slapped him round the face all the same – “just in case”.
He found contentment with his fourth wife, Kristina Tholstrup, and he regarded her daughter, Flossie, as his own. When Flossie died of cancer last year, aged only 47, Roger was devastated. I met up with him at her house in the Cotswolds (he and Kristina had come to England from their home in Switzerland to sort out selling it) and found him as charming as ever, but uncharacteristically subdued: “I read the obituaries first now. Do you? Not yet? You will.”
He didn’t like getting older. “You can either grow old gracefully or begrudgingly,” he used to say. “I choose to do both.”
He didn’t like some aspects of modern life. He’d recently handed in the manuscript of his book Getting
On, which will be published in the autumn, and in it he charts his frustrations with such irritations as self-checkout machines and the impossibility of being able to order a simple cup of coffee.
He resented the aches and pains that come with age and didn’t want to be seen to be unsteady on his feet. Pulling on his smart blue blazer and adjusting the Windsor knot in his tie, he said: “I still want to look the part.”
To mark his 90th year, dressed to kill, he took a one-man show on the road. Next month, I was due to take a BBC crew to the south of France to make a film with him about his idea of heaven. I had a last email from him only four weeks ago: “I am having all sorts of investigations going on at the hospital in Lausanne… The outcome I trust will be positive.”
Roger often quoted his friend and hero David Niven: “Keep the circus going inside you, keep it going… it’ll all work out in the end.”
For Roger, however, the end came last Tuesday morning when the cancer, discovered during those tests in Lausanne, overwhelmed him.
He kept the circus going as long as he could. He went on working, although, of course, financially he didn’t need to. He worked because he preferred to be busy and because he liked – perhaps needed – the reassurance of ongoing laughter and applause.
I told him I knew the secret of his success.
“Well?” he asked, eyebrow raised. “Good humour. Good manners. Good acting.”
He laughed. “Two out of three isn’t bad.”
“You’re the best Bond,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re the Queen’s favourite Bond,” I added.
“Do you think so?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re roughly the same age as the Queen and as handsome as Prince Philip in his prime. And in the Seventies, when the Queen used to take her summer holidays cruising round the coast of Scotland in the Royal Yacht Britannia, she got all your films to watch in the on-board cinema. You’re her favourite.”
“Really?” Other eyebrow up. “Really.”
“That’s rather nice to know. Thank you. I’ll settle for that.”
He offered to teach me acting. ‘I’ll show you everything I know,’ he said. ‘It won’t take long’